


Appledore

by Boton



Series: The Road to Appledore [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen, His Last Vow Spoilers, Minor Character Death implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2729318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boton/pseuds/Boton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The great Sherlock Holmes had lost.  In his quest to solve the case of Charles Augustus Magnussen, he failed to be able to out-think and out-plan the blackmailer.  But even as he stands on the edge of violence, he thinks through what he has won in the process of losing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appledore

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes and his universe are the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock is the creation of the BBC and its partners, and of co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Some brief excerpts of dialogue are taken from Sherlock. This work is for my pleasure and that of my readers; I am not profiting from the intellectual property of those creators listed above.
> 
> Author's Note: The final story in "The Road to Appledore," this was a challenge because not much action can be written that's not already in the episode. However, by approaching the story entirely from within Sherlock's mind, I got to explore the character development and growth that occurred over the entire third season. The events at Appledore are a turning point for Sherlock Holmes that helps him develop in ways that he perhaps did not expect.

Sherlock Holmes had lost.

The great Sherlock Holmes -- who had defeated James Moriarty, who had saved Parliament from destruction at the hands of a terrorist bombing, who had always been able to solve his cases with intellect and mental acuity – stood on the terrace outside Appledore, watching Charles Augustus Magnussen flick John’s face. 

How had this gone so wrong?

Perhaps he should never have arranged this meeting with Magnussen when he did, that fine day in late summer. He remembered the nurses urging him to start walking to rebuild his strength, suggesting that perhaps he’d like to take some of his meals in the hospital canteen rather than in his room. So, still dependent on a morphine drip to make movement something less than agonizing, he texted Magnussen to arrange a meeting and walked out the doors of The London to the little restaurant next door. 

He was certain he had figured Magnussen out; he combed every memory of his interactions with the man he had tucked away in his mind palace, and he was certain that he had found the man’s vulnerability: a computer link to the digitized records from the Appledore vaults, accessible from Magnussen’s spectacles. 

But when this turned out to not be the case, he pressed ahead anyway. Swaying slightly from the combined effects of the pain, morphine, and the stress of the meeting, he proposed that he would effect a trade with Magnussen to take place at Christmas. Mycroft’s state secrets in exchange for selected bits from Magnussen’s vaults: the bits that implicated Mary in her past as an assassin.

That had been an error.

But the bigger error, he thought, was allowing himself to develop pressure points. He really had no need to set up drug use as a false pressure point for Magnussen to discover, because it turned out that he already had such vulnerabilities, each with a face and a name.

There was John, of course. His best friend. His partner in detection. The balance that kept him from spinning out of control. When John asked Sherlock to be his best man, Sherlock naturally gathered all the data he could about the role, and he discovered that, beyond his duties reading telegrams and giving the toast, the best man was traditionally seen as one person who would support the newlywed couple in their marriage. Sherlock took that job more seriously than any best man in history had ever done. 

John loved Mary with all his heart; Sherlock could see that. If Magnussen harmed Mary, if he divulged her location to the family of a criminal she had killed and they came after her, it would kill John as well. And here John stood, coiled, nearly ready to strike out at Magnussen, only making it through the humiliation Magnussen was inflicting because he wanted more than anything to protect Mary.

Mary. A soul mate of a different sort to Sherlock. Dangerous and not quite one of the angels, perhaps, but utterly devoted to John and to their new family. She was willing to kill to protect this precious part of her life; she was nearly ready to kill Sherlock to do so. She certainly would not lose sleep if Magnussen died while John and she lived. “People like Magnussen should be killed,” her words echoed in Sherlock’s head. “That’s why there are people like me.” Mary was willing to do what needed to be done to protect that which she held dear. Sherlock and Mary were like two sides of the same coin, albeit perhaps one that had a bullet hole drilled through the center.

“Janine managed it once. She makes the funniest noises.”

He pulled himself out of his panicked reverie long enough to hear Magnussen mention Janine. Dear, sassy, spunky Janine. There had been other women in his life before Janine; his rare, magnetic attraction to The Woman came instantly to mind. And had he been callow enough to make love to Janine while using her for a case, she would not have been his first lover. But, in many ways, she was his first adult girlfriend. The first woman he had ever taken out for fish and chips at two in the morning because they both were awake and laughing at something on the telly. The first woman who had ever caused him to move the coffee to a lower shelf so she could reach it when she got up first in the morning. The first who had ever occupied a regular place in his life, if not necessarily always in his bed. The thought that Magnussen had subjected Janine to manipulation and embarrassment sent an unexpected coil of anger up from the base of Sherlock’s spine.

The sound of helicopters was growing closer. Mycroft. His arch enemy. His first friend. His brother. He hardly dared believe Mycroft’s earlier confession that the loss of Sherlock would break his heart; the two just didn’t think that way. But, standing here on the cold stone pavers, he knew that Mycroft had utter faith that Sherlock had caught Magnussen with a basement vault full of state secrets that would cause the man to be jailed for the rest of his life. Should Mycroft instead find the picture Magnussen was painting of Sherlock and John treasonously selling secrets, it would be the end of Mycroft’s career. He had worked so hard, had such a genuine love of Queen and country and the work he did, the humiliation would devastate him, ruin him, and end everything he had ever lived for.

And this entire chain of pressure points depended on the link that was Sherlock Holmes.

Pressure points were a vulnerability, and Magnussen had used all of these to gain control of Sherlock, of his friends, and, by extension, of much of the Western world through Mycroft. No amount of reason or deduction could change that. And that, he thought, was a crushing defeat.

He had come to Appledore to clear out Magnussen’s vaults. And, slowly, he realized that even in defeat, he could achieve his goal. 

“To clarify: Appledore’s vaults only exist in your mind, nowhere else, just there,” Sherlock shouted to Mangussen over the roar of helicopter blades. 

“They’re not real. They never have been,” Magnussen gloated.

Maybe pressure points weren’t a vulnerability after all. Maybe pressure points helped clarify one’s priorities. Knowing what you were willing to die for lent a certain purpose to living, Sherlock mused.

Friendship. Loyalty. Companionship. Family. These were never things that Sherlock expected to have in his life. And now, as he realized that he indeed had them, he knew he was willing to give up his life to protect them.

“Sorry. No chance for you to be a hero this time, Mr. Holmes,” Magnussen sneered. 

Sherlock walked around John and quickly sneaked a hand into John’s pocket to take out his pistol. Maybe being a hero wasn’t really necessary. Maybe it was enough to be an ordinary man with an extraordinary group of people around you. 

“Oh, do your research. I’m not a hero; I’m a high-functioning sociopath,” Sherlock proclaimed, holding fast to the images of John, Mary, Janine, and Mycroft. 

“Merry Christmas!” he yelled as he fired a single shot and threw the pistol away in one fluid move, raising his hands and preparing to take whatever punishment came his way as a result.

The Appledore vaults were empty.


End file.
